We all know that literature can be transportive, but when it takes the reader overseas, there’s something especially magical at play—especially when the book is an international mystery or thriller. If you’re not quite ready to hang up your hat for the travel season, these six books that will sate both your wanderlust and your investigative curiosity.
It’s no surprise that this novel experienced wide success in Japan before it was translated into English just a few years ago: our protagonist is Manako Kaiji, a gourmet cook who used her skills to entice men on dating sites. Two years later, after three of her dates were found dead under suspicious circumstances, Kaiji waits for her second appeal in a detention facility. That’s when Rika Machida, a journalist who is decidedly not a good cook gets in touch to ask for Kaiji’s beef stew recipe. She’s hoping to soften Kaiji up as an interview suspect, but as the women become friends, Machida finds herself doing more of the changing.
Format
Hardcover
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This work of historical fiction takes place in Malaya (now Malaysia) on timelines of 1935 and 1945. For those who aren’t aware, Malaya was ruled for 100 years by the British before the Japanese invaded in 1941, promising an “Asia for Asians.” Cecily Alcantara’s family finds serious danger under the brutal Japanese occupation, from the disappearance of her fifteen-year-old son, to the daughter she’s confined in their basement as a precaution against conscription into a “comfort station.” Her eldest daughter even works at a tea house serving drunk Japanese soldiers. Cecily can’t live with herself for her part in the occupation: ten years ago, in 1935, she was lured into a life of espionage to help the Japanese invade… and now she doesn’t know how to undo or atone for her actions.
Format
Trade Cloth; Trade Cloth
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 2, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
It’s the Belle Epoque in Paris, and Fin Tighe is an engineer on a shoestring salary that can barely support himself and his ballerina cousin, Aurelie. But when Fin’s employer, Gustave Eiffel, goes about hunting funds for his pet project, Fin jumps at the chance to earn a little extra cash. It helps that around this time, Gilbert Duhais introduces Fin to connected speculators… but Gilbert also convinces Fin to portray himself as his father’s heir, even though as an illegitimate child, Fin is decidedly not. When one of Fin’s friends is murdered near a secret gay club he frequents, he has to figure out where his past meets his present romance, and what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 28, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
If you love an ancient mystery steeped in religion, this is the book for you. Nick Lee—whose job is to protect cultural artifacts through his position at the United Nations Cultural Liaison and Investigative Office—gets a call from his ex-girlfriend Kelsey Deal. Now, she’s a nun stationed in Belgium, and she’s summoning him because she has unwittingly stumbled upon the twelfth panel of the Ghent altarpiece… which is the most violated work of art in the world. This particular panel was stolen in 1934 and never seen again, until now. It’s the physical artifact of a two-thousand-year-old conflict between the Maidens of Saint-Michael, the Vultures, a secret order of nuns, and the Vatican, who wants to find and expose the truth that the Vultures are guarding. Nick Lee has to navigate between these two groups, figure out what each of them want, and preserve the recovered art in the process.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 31, 2023. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Detective Leonore Asker seems to have the leading position at Malmö’s Major Crime Division within reach. But things go awry when, in the middle of a high profile kidnapping case, management relegates her to the so-called Department of Lost Souls–the unit for odd, cold cases banished to the basement of the police station.
Despite the humiliation, Asker is drawn into one of the more peculiar cases. Someone is secretly placing small ominous figures in a huge model train displays and one of the figures seems to represent the missing woman from the kidnapping case. As Asker’s investigation leads her into the world of the abandoned and forgotten, she reaches out to her old friend and urban explorer Martin Hill. Together they discover that an unusual kind of evil lurks—at the heart of a mountain, deep down in the darkness.
Format
Trade Cloth; Trade Cloth
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 30, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
John Rebus spent his life as a cop putting Edinburgh’s most deadly criminals behind bars. Now having been convicted of a homicide, he’s joined them…
A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell deep in the heart of Scotland’s most infamous prison. Sleeping in a cell across the floor lies John Rebus, the equally notorious detective. Stripped of his badge and estranged from his police family, he is now fighting for his own life – protected by an old nemesis but always one wrong move away from the shank. As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even this legendary figure struggles to keep his head.
They say old habits die hard, though. The death stirs Rebus’s deductive—and manipulative—impulses, setting off a domino-chain of scheming criminals, corrupt prison guards and perhaps only one or two good souls who may see it all through.
But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 15, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.